


Sanctuaries

by aspirare



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Black Dog, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Michael has doubts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 16:37:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6863665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aspirare/pseuds/aspirare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sam answer a request to hunt down a malevolent creature that is terrorizing a church congregation. Meanwhile, Michael takes the opportunity to try once more and convince Dean into a partnership. Michael/Dean.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctuaries

**Author's Note:**

> Bear with me as I play a little fast and loose with the timelines and events of season five, but for the most part, this story diverges post-“The Song Remains the Same.”

**PART I.**

*

_“From the conflagrant mass, purg’d and refin’d,_

_New Heav’ns, new Earth, Ages of endless date_

_Founded in righteousness and peace and love,_

_To bring forth fruits of Joy and eternal Bliss.”_

_\--Paradise Lost. Book XII. Lines 548-551._ __

The Archangel Michael speaks about the future of mankind as he escorts Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. 

*

The summer was baking hot. Water mirages shimmered on the pavement as Dean steered the Impala south and west past Savannah, where the cooler sea air condensed into choking humidity. Outside the car windows, the landscape withered the more they traveled inland. What had started in March as a dry spell, August was turning into a drought, desiccating the grasses and wilting the trees. It was an unwelcome detour from the cool and misty Appalachians, where Sam had talked him out of following a lead on coal miner’s ghost in favor of, well, _a favor_.

For the fifth time since they’d left the interstate, Dean looked over at Sam. Sam hadn’t spoken in almost two hours himself, a frown creasing the skin between his eyebrows as he read through their father’s journal. Newspaper articles, printed off the internet, were spread out in his lap and across the dashboard, each headline worse than the other.

“I don’t know about this, Sammy,” Dean said as he faced forward again, though there wasn’t much that needed attention. Despite the occasional farmhouse, they hadn’t seen another car on this two-lane road in ages. “You sure this is a good idea?”

“Father Reynolds called and asked us to help,” Sam replied, as though that settled the question. “I promised him we would.”

“Reynolds,” Dean repeated, slowly. The name sounded familiar, but it took him a moment to remember it out of the long list of faces they’d saved—and not saved—over the years. Then, he had it. Providence, visions of heavenly messengers, and an improbable death for a rapist that still made Dean itch, even after all that he had learned of since then. “Had that priest friend who thought he was an angel.”

“Father Gregory,” Sam clarified. It was said simply enough, but the underlying tone had Dean gritting his teeth. He hadn’t been there for the last rites, or Sam’s conversation with Gregory’s ghost, but he had been there for Sam’s disappointment. That first disillusionment towards a higher power that ended up being not so much holy benevolence as complete dickishness. If just for that reason, it pissed Dean off.

“You know, in retrospect, I’d say the dude was a better angel than real ones. At least he had morals.”

Sam glared at Dean from the corner of his eyes, which was pretty much the only expression Sam had left for him lately—the same hostility that seemed to be lurking behind every interaction. That probably needed to be _addressed_ , but for now, Dean backed down. There were other things to talk about, especially since he had been trusting Sam’s lead since Asheville. “Yeah, all right. So what are we looking at?”

“I’m not sure, exactly. Father Reynolds couldn’t give me a lot of details. But I guess a buddy of his is having trouble in his parish. From what I can figure, it’s another ghost. The local newspaper’s been running stories about people seeing shadowy figures, usually on the road, and strange sounds. And it looks like things are getting pretty bad; people are saying they’re afraid to go out at night. 

“Any deaths?”

“Just one,” Sam answered. “I haven’t found anything yet in the town’s records that would explain a haunting, but about three weeks ago, Luke Ratley, age 58, was walking down the road at midnight when he was struck by a car that swerved onto the shoulder. He was still alive when the paramedics got there, and apparently his last words were about glowing red eyes and getting chased by the Devil.”

“That’s normal,” Dean muttered. “So was Bright-Eyes the reason Ratley was on the road, or the cause of the accident?”

“Don’t know yet. So we’re going to check it out?” Sam closed the journal, something in his face turning hopeful, as though he had expected Dean to put up more of a fight about this. It was those same puppy eyes that—damnit—Dean _still_ hadn’t learned how to resist. And hell if he knew why Sam was so eager to help Reynolds, but a hunt was a hunt, and the more they could irritate Heaven and Hell alike by stalling the apocalypse, so much the better.

“Yeah,” Dean said, stepping down on the gas pedal a little harder. “Yeah, we’re going to check it out.”

 

*

 

**Three Heart Creek, Georgia**

 

“This is it? Really?” Dean pulled the Impala into the weedy parking lot of a tiny, white-washed church, angling to get under the shade of a giant live oak as much as he could. “This looks more like Little House on the Prairie.”

Sam snorted. “Like you ever watched that show,” he said. He was stuffing the journal and sheets of paper into his bag, and Dean took the chance to survey their apparent jobsite. If this was a town, as the marker several miles back said it was, then they were on the very edges of it. There was nothing out here, except the church, the tree-lined road, and parched fields beyond. A sign, its paint peeling, stood low and unassuming by the steps leading up to the church’s doors. Under the wild, untrimmed vines of a clematis, it read: _Joyous Revival Baptist Ministry_. And, inexpertly carved below that: _Est. 1850._

Pre-Civil War, then, which certainly would have given the grounds plenty of time to soak in some bad mojo. A small yard, fenced in, wrapped around from the side of the church to the back. It was overgrown, but even from here, he could see the tops of headstones over the yellow grass.

Cemeteries, in Dean’s experience, were actually one of the places _least_ likely to have ghosts, and while at first glance everything seemed normal and innocent enough, some of the worst things he had ever seen in the world started off wrapped up in rainbows and sunshine.

Well. Might as find out exactly what they were up against.

“Who are we going in as?” Dean asked, already cycling through which personalities to use for the investigation. Detectives, reporters, potential congregants—

“Ourselves,” Sam answered simply. “The Reverend’s name is Eldar Reeves, and he knows we’re coming.”

It wasn’t the first time they had started on a hunt by recommendation, but the loss of anonymity—particularly to someone neither brother had met before—still made Dean’s skin crawl. Where their names went, trouble followed. Policemen and uncomfortable questions at best, monsters that hunted them back at worst. Sam didn’t seem too worried about it, but then, he always had more trust in people.

Deciding to let it go for the moment, Dean shrugged.

“All right, then. Let’s go see what has these parishioners’ panties in a twist,” he said and pushed open the door.

Gravel crunched under the heel of Dean’s boots as he stepped outside, and the sudden heat—like walking into a wall—made sweat instantly bead along his hairline. As Sam came around the hood of the Impala, Dean started walking, slowly, towards the church. Everything was quiet. Only insects seemed unfazed by the midday sun, and though the air was sweet, and heavy, there was no hint of the skunk-like smell that seemed to follow some of the nastier creatures that liked to scavenge around hallowed grounds.

“Without a death to explain a haunting, I don’t know what else this thing could be,” Dean said. He gestured behind him. “There’s no crossroads, so it can’t be a demon with a taste for irony.”

“I don’t know either,” Sam agreed. “Red eyes, shadowy figure on the road seen right before a fatal accident….that’s almost the Mothman legend. 

“Except we’ve never seen anything indicate the Mothman is real, and that story’s out of West Virginia, not Georgia.”

“Maybe…” Sam started, but cut himself off. They had reached the bottom of the stairs, but Sam paused, casting one thoughtful look down the road, leading west. “Dean, you don’t think it could be a black dog, do you?”

Dean inhaled.

_Black dog._

They had encountered a black dog only once before, in the Hanging Hills of Connecticut, when they were kids. It had driven his father nearly mad as they chased it all over the landscape, the frustration made even worse when they had to leave to destroy a violent poltergeist in Ohio and call the black dog a failed hunt. Almost nothing could make John angrier, and Dean could still remember him hunched over napkins in diners for months afterword, doodling pictures of the beast while muttering under his breath. Sam had never gotten a glimpse of the thing, but Dean had.

Out of all the monsters he’d encountered in his bizarre, violent life, he could still clearly picture it: no small spaniel of lore but a wild and rangy thing, wrinkled lips curled back over rows of pearly, sharp teeth, a bright red tongue that lolled out the side of its mouth as it trotted up the woody trail, padding silently on giant feet as it came right up to him, nose to nose, its breath hot-- 

_If a man shall meet the Black Dog once, it shall be for joy;_

_And if twice, it shall be for sorrow;_

_And the third time, he shall…_

“I hope not,” Dean replied. Something must have changed in his voice, or his face, because Sam frowned at him. He opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment, the doors to the church opened and a man peered out.

Dean was used to taking quick stock of people, and his first impression was that this was like no other man of God he had ever met before.

He was dressed in jeans and short sleeves, arms caked with dirt all the way up to the elbow. He had to have been at least in his sixties, grayed hair shorn close and just as dusty as the rest of him. He had green eyes that were shadowed under a dark, wrinkled brow, but there was no suspicion to him. In fact, he was grinning.

“Sam Winchester?” the man asked. His words were almost lost against the tide of his southern accent, thick as molasses in his mouth.

“Ah, yes, that’s me,” Sam replied, hooking the strap of his bag around his shoulder so he could hop up the steps and reach out more easily to shake the man’s hand. “This is my brother, Dean. You must be the Reverend.”

“Just Pastor Reeves is fine. Nice to meet you,” the man said, jovially. He released Sam’s hand, and looked over the both of them, a little bit impressed. “You boys got here quick.”

“We were in the area,” Sam said. Which, no, they weren’t; they were in Tennessee, but after a sharp glance from Sam, Dean kept his mouth shut. “And Father Reynolds told us it was something of an emergency.”

“You could say that. Come on in.”

Pastor Reeves stepped aside, and Dean came up the stairs himself, following Sam inside. The church doors opened up into the sanctuary itself—a large, single room, that up close, was in even worse shape than it appeared from the parking lot. The wood of the floor was scuffed and warped from both age and exposure. Though it was measurably cooler indoors, Dean suspected that was only because the roof was providing shade; if the church had air conditioning, it wasn’t running. Instead, the windows along the walls of the worship hall were swung wide open to tempt in what little breeze there was.

The hall was surprisingly bare; aside from a few hanging plants, overhead lamps and lazily turning fans, there wasn’t much in the way of decorations. Just the pews, and well-used hymn books tucked in the back slots.

There was also no one else around. It shouldn’t have been too surprising; lunchtime on a Thursday probably wasn’t peak hours for worshippers, but there was still an eeriness to it. An emptiness that didn’t feel right. Sam had never understood when Dean tried to explain it, but Dean knew from long hours spent behind the wheel of the Impala that things—and places—could have a sense about them too.

Despite the heat, Dean shivered.

Pastor Reeves led them to the front of the sanctuary, around the communion table and the ambo. Even farther back, behind the choir seats, there was another door, painted the same pale blue was the walls. Before he opened it, though, Reeves stopped, his hand on the knob.

“What’s been going on around here…it may not have been an emergency,” he began. “I mean, there’s been some strange things going on, but I thought it could maybe be all right. Until this.”

With that, Reeves pulled the door open, towards him, revealing that the other side had been torn into.

That was the only way Dean could describe it, once he saw the huge scratches that were gouged into the wood—nearly half an inch deep. The slashes started almost at the top and trailed, hash-marked, all the way to the bottom, where the wood was hanging off in splinters. At first glance, it looked like someone had tried to go through the door with a chainsaw, but with the way the scratches were grouped, it was actually more like—

“Claws?” Sam murmured, stretching out his hand. He splayed out his fingers, hooking them into the marks and tracing them down. Even as big as he was, Sam had trouble matching their full width. “What caused this?”

“I was hoping y’all could tell me,” Reeves answered. “Let’s go to my office. We can chat.”

The door opened into a narrow hallway, as part of an added on building that, while obviously of newer construction than the rest of the church, was still pretty run down. The hallway went back about forty feet, where another door opened to the outside; its glass was clouded over, but a few muted beams of sunshine made it through in dappled patterns on the carpet. Other than that, the hallway was closed off, and had the mustiness to go with it.

On the right, towards the end of the hall and past a closed room with a sign that said ‘Choir,’ Pastor Reeves ushered them into his office. At least, Dean was pretty sure it was an office, outfitted as it was with a desk and piles of books everywhere, but he also thought it might have once been a storage closet. There were still cleaning supplies pushed up all together in one corner.

Two mismatched chairs—one that belonged in a doctor’s office and another that looked like it came from a cafeteria—were set in front of the desk. Dean darted in front of Sam to get the one with actual cushions on it, near the open window.

Sam, for his part, made a face but largely ignored Dean, turning to Pastor Reeves as he sat.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking,” Sam said, beginning his interview in that same roundabout way he always did. “How do you and Father Reynolds know each other?”

“I know it’s strange, right? A Catholic and a Baptist? All we need is a Lutheran and we could walk into a bar,” Reeves laughed as he settled into his own chair. He leaned back, legs crossed and hands folded loosely in his lap in a semblance of relaxation—surprising for someone whose town was supposedly being terrorized by a ghost. “Actually, we met at an inter-denominational conference for church leaders in poor and rural areas. We’ve stayed in touch over the years, mostly just offering to convert each other. Joke’s on him, though. I don’t think he’s allowed to forgive a Baptist.”

Pastor Reeves spoke with a certain humor in his voice that conjured up images of a Catholic priest and Baptist minister in exaggeration, proselytizing at each other for years, probably through handwritten letters. Dean chuckled. He couldn’t help it. He liked this guy. 

“We stuck to pretty much good fun. Brainstorming sermons. Christmas cards,” Reeves continued, and his amusement abruptly changed shape and became something haunted and grim instead. “Until recently, when all this began.”

Sam picked up the cue. “And what exactly _is_ ‘all this,’ Pastor?”

To that, Reeves didn’t answer right away. Instead, he caught his tongue between his teeth and sucked on it while he thought for a minute. Dean waited, watching his face with a careful eye, looking for any sign, any tell, that Reeves knew more than what he was admitting to. It wasn’t always easy. They had met some pretty damn good liars over the years, and sometimes, it was better to take things at face value. The other pieces, if there were any, would fall into place later. 

As it was, the pastor’s eyes had unfocused, as if he were suddenly fascinated by the dust motes floating in the air. But, if he was anything like the other victims they’d talked to, he’d be trying to find the words for something that could never be described.

“You have to understand something, first,” Reeves spoke at last. “We’re way out here in the country. Everyone knows each other’s business, and most everyone has lived here their entire lives. Now. Having said that, about four months ago, people started complaining about having problems with wild animals.”

“Wild animals?” Sam echoed, flashing a quick side glance, which Dean resolutely ignored.

_Black dog, black dog._

“We see all sorts of things out here. There’s always coyotes, foxes, wild hogs. In fact, you two should’ve been here a few months ago when an alligator walked in the front door of this church, right in the middle of my sermon, happy as you please. Came up the center aisle and sat next to old Jude Grayson in the third row. The man’s ninety years old, in a wheelchair. The doctors said he’d never walk again, but I tell you boys now. That man _walked_.”

The corner of Sam’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t laugh the way he might have used to. It was another black tick for the tally Dean was keeping in his head of things he was noticing about Sam. Things that, on top of literally everything else right now, was _wrong._ Granted, Sam had always been polite and quiet, a little reserved with the people they interviewed—a good hunter, always—but now it seemed he wasn’t even _liking_ them as much. Ever since he had gotten dragged back into the hunter’s life. Ever since that encounter with the wraith. Ever since Lucifer started whispering into his ear at night. 

“So what you’re saying is,” Sam began.

“What I’m saying is that people know what’s out there. And lately, they’re hearing things they haven’t ever heard before. Sometimes it’s howling. Sometimes it’s moaning. Sometimes it’s screaming.”

_If twice, it shall be for sorrow…_

A muscle tightened in Dean’s jaw. The lore concerning black dogs was vast but shallow, and often contradictory. Most of the legends came from Europe, where black dogs could be anything from benign guardians of children to death omens. No one agreed on what the hell black dogs even _were_ , whether they were ghosts or spirits or something else altogether. But at this point, Dean didn’t really care. What mattered is that once these things got aggressive, they were _bad news_. And that meant it had to be stopped.

The dog in Connecticut had, out of nowhere, started leading people to the edges of cliffs, where it’d watch them fall to the rocks below. It had stopped on its own, as mysteriously as it had begun, but Dean didn’t want to give this dog the same opportunity.

“How bad has it gotten?” Dean asked. Pastor Reeves turned in his seat to look at him, grimacing a little as he steeled himself. Dean recognized that expression. It was the same face everyone made when they had to talk about something impossible they had witnessed.

“There’s been a lot of property damage, too,” Reeves said. “It’s not just people’s gardens, either. Crops are getting ruined. Livestock ripped to shreds. Doors and windows torn up like something really wanted to get inside. Animal control thinks it could be a rabies outbreak among the coyote population. Something that’s making ‘em go nuts.”

“And what do you think?” Dean pressed.

“I think I was in the sanctuary, just sweeping up a bit before I left for the night when all of a sudden something hit that door like someone was trying to swing a sledgehammer through it. And the _sounds_ it was making, like a pack of wild boars that were out for blood. It weren’t no coyote.”

“Did you see it?” Sam asked. Reeves shook his head. 

“No. I ran out the front and circled around, thinking maybe I could close up the back and shut it inside, but by the time I got there, it was gone. There was nothing there. Just what was left of the door. When the choir came to practice, I told them a bear had got in. No sense making them panic worse.”

Dean didn’t know what kind of town this was where telling someone a bear was loose would make them _less_ afraid, but maybe he understood. With the other kinds of predators that were out there, an ordinary animal might be the preferred option.

“But all that might have been all right,” Reeves continued, echoing his earlier soft-pedaling. “Maybe I could have handled it. But then about three weeks ago, people started coming up to me after church, or while I was in town, and they’d tell me that I wasn’t doing a good job. That they didn’t think I was bringing the Lord’s message. I didn’t know what to make of it, at first. Me and the people here…we always got along fine. I thought maybe the drought’s making things tough. The heat’s getting to ‘em. The economy’s still rough. But once they started saying that they wouldn’t come anymore because my sermons were making them _angry_ …. That’s when I decided to call up to John in Rhode Island. See if he had ever heard of anything like this happening. Or if he knew anyone who could help.”

Dean shifted in his seat, turning his attention for the moment to a clock on a nearby shelf. Like the rest of the office, it hadn’t seen a cleaning rag in ages, but it gave him something to focus on. Shadows, glowing eyes, phantom barking and howling…it all fit with a black dog. But mass discontent? A turning of the mindset of the entire town towards resentment? That was less spectral canine and more of the same warping chaos that had been unleashed across America since the Seals were opened.

Still. They didn’t have proof of anything yet. And there was something else that Pastor Reeves had said that snagged his attention.

 “You thought you could have handled it?”

Sam made an aborted movement, and, hey, if Sam had also registered the odd statement but wanted to bide his time in addressing it, oh well. The hunter community was only loosely connected, each one knowing each other by word of mouth only and a haphazard web of cellphone contacts and favors, but if there was some hick Baptist minister who had an ear to the ground, Dean thought he would have—should have—heard about him by now. He didn’t like wild cards, and both he and Sam had been dealt far too many of them lately.

Pastor Reeves raised an eyebrow, and Dean just shrugged. “Boy,” Reeves said, unintimidated by whatever accusation he thought Dean had thrown at him. “I grew up in the South. You can’t go to your mailbox without running into one ghost story or another. I’m not blind, and I’ve seen some strange things, myself. But I know my limits.”

“And what happened to Luke Ratley?” Sam cut in. A breeze, if it could even be called that, stirred through the window, carrying with it the scent of honeysuckle and kudzu. It was little relief; with the three of them packed together, the air was stifling. But Reeves didn’t seem to notice, the lines in his face setting even deeper as he bowed his head.

“Poor Luke. That was on Monday. He and I had just finished talking and he was heading home. I offered him a ride, but he wanted to walk. Said he wanted to take the shortcut. Then Fletch came barreling down the road like a bat outta hell…it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes between when I last saw Luke and when he died.”

Sam snapped to attention, like a cat catching sight of a sparrow. “He died in front of the church?”

“Yeah. Just about a hundred yards down the road.”

That was a valuable piece of information, even if Pastor Reeves didn’t know it. The changes to the congregation, the attack on the church itself, and now a death practically on its doorstep? One would be an incident. Three made for a pattern.

The gleam in Sam’s eyes meant he’d picked up on it, too. Dean had a moment’s encouragement from that. Despite everything they were going through, despite everything that Sam was undoubtedly still hiding from him, things were okay as long as Sam could still take to the hunt.

 Energized a bit, Dean leaned forward in his chair.

 “Will you show us?”

 *

 Luke Ratley died gruesomely and painfully.

As Pastor Reeves recounted the accident, Dean found himself grimacing. He had witnessed his own lion’s share of horrifying casualties, but that didn’t exactly make it _easier_. Stepping off the pavement, Dean knelt down next to deep ruts in the clay, where the plants were either crushed or ripped out from their roots. Without any rain to wash away the scene, the tire marks were still imprinted into the dirt. 

It happened like this.

At 9:50 pm, exactly, Luke stormed out of Joyous Revival in a fit of anger, cursing out Pastor Reeves for doing nothing to help him, even as he was unintelligible about what he needed help _with_. Then there was a time gap with no one to account for it, since Reeves had been left behind, and it was five minutes before Luke started screaming.

Reeves had come running, but a man named Fletch in a Ford pickup got there first, at almost sixty miles an hour. Whether Fletch had aimed for Luke or not, Reeves didn’t know. All he saw was the truck leave the road, hit a bad patch of gravel, and flip over entirely. No brake lights. It rolled, stopping—almost impossibly—precisely over the top of Luke’s lower body, crushing him. The paramedics came, but only in time to watch Luke breathe his last. He had spoken, but not about pain or his family or the two tons of machinery that were squeezing his internal organs out like a tube of toothpaste.

He spoke about a monster that was chasing him, that was still standing under the trees— _why aren’t you all looking at it? It’s there hiding in the dark_ —with teeth like broken oyster shells and blood bursting from its gums.

Luke’s heart gave out while still in the throes of hysteria, at 10:10 pm.

 “What do you think?” Sam crouched down next to Dean, lowering his voice so they could talk just between the two of them. Pastor Reeves had ventured off a ways, shuffling up and down the road as he put a polite amount of distance between them.

“I don’t know, man,” Dean replied. He crumbled some dirt between his fingers, so dry that it didn’t so much fall in clumps as dissolve into a fine dust, which he brushed off against his jeans. Perhaps the real supernatural event here was that any plants were still growing here at all. “It all sounds like a black dog, but if it is, it would be a hell of a lot meaner than any of the ones I’ve ever heard about.”

Sam laid his hand flat against the ground, splaying out his fingers as though he could get the ground to tell him what happened if he only asked. Actually, at this point, it would probably be the best lead they could hope for on this thing’s whereabouts. Black dogs never left any traces of themselves—no tracks, no hair, no scent of ozone—unless they wanted to. It was part of what made them so difficult to hunt. Maybe Dean could understand his father going a little bit insane when he had tried it, too.

 “I wonder why it seems to be focusing on the church,” Sam mused.

“Or its minister,” Dean countered. “Assuming he doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t think so. As he was talking…I’m pretty sure he’s telling the truth.”

Silently, Dean agreed with him, but that put them in the unfortunate position of having no leads at all. Especially since, while circumstances fit with a dog, it didn’t make any _sense._  

“What I don’t get is why _here_? I’ve never heard of a credible black dog legend anywhere near out of the South. And they’re usually associated with prisons, aren’t they?”

“Or places of execution,” Sam added, frowning. His eyes narrowed as he surveyed the site again, as though certain he had missed something. But aside from the tire and drag marks, everything looked clean. The road was straight and long; with tobacco and soybean fields to the right and woods to the left. The sides of the road just needed county maintenance and a mower—wild parsnip and Queen Anne’s Lace were innocuous enough, with nothing out of the ordinary or mysteriously growing pagan plants. Sam shook his head again. “Black dogs are seen near crossroads, too. Ancient paths. And there’s none of that around here.”

“That we know of,” Dean said, pointedly, making Sam raise an eyebrow at him as he stood up, and Sam moved to join him. “Let’s see if our friend has some more honesty for us. Hey, Pastor Reeves!”

Dean waved, and Reeves hurried back to them. “What is it?”

“Earlier, you said Ratley was going to take a shortcut home. What shortcut? Is there another road right around here?”

“No,” Pastor Reeves answered, and Dean’s mouth twisted sourly. Another lead shot down before they even had a chance to— “Well, not officially,” Reeves corrected a second later.

Sam stepped in closer. “What do you mean?”

 “It’s not on any of the maps, but there’s an old wagon rut the farmers used to use about a hundred years ago, before this road got put in. I think it was an old Indian trail before that. It cuts right across here, a little further up.”

_Crossroads. Ancient paths._

_And Bingo was his name-o._

Dean opened his mouth, about to ask Pastor Reeves to take them to the trail head, when he was cut off by the sound of a car rumbling its way up the road from behind them. The story of Luke Ratley fresh in his mind, Dean flinched, muscles moving before he could consciously decide to fling himself out of the way, but he stopped when Reeves remained where he was, standing calmly.

“Ah. That’ll be Michael, coming back from town,” Pastor Reeves said, raising his hand in greeting to the driver. “He’s running a bit late, isn’t he?”

Dean flinched again, this time for an entirely different reason, then immediately berated himself. Of course he was being ridiculous. Michael was a common male name that could belong to anybody. He’d met a hundred of them over his lifetime.

But as of right now? Only one of them had actually _mattered_ , and it wasn’t that long ago ( _32 years, technically_ ), when the Prince Douchebag of Heaven had cornered him, wearing his dad’s face, and told him that everything he had thought, everything he had lived for and fought for and suffered for and _died_ for had meant nothing. That no matter what, it would _never_ mean anything. All because there was some ineffable script which none of the actors were allowed to see, with no ad-libbing allowed, each line meticulously laid out by a Director who hadn’t bothered to show up for filming.

_Free will is an illusion…_

That conversation had played itself out over and over again, like the same song on repeat, inside Dean’s head as he tried to fall asleep for the past three months.

_Think of the million choices you make every day…_

So yeah. Maybe he was a little jumpy. From the way Sam had tensed up, he was on the same train of thought. 

Dean turned around, half expecting to see a young John Winchester standing in front of him, for all appearances human except for the eyes, where the _humanity_ was replaced with something else. Something like starlight, bright and cold and imperial.

He wasn’t there.

The car was an old GMC Blazer, twenty years old, and it was red either by paint or by rust. At this distance, Dean couldn’t see the driver, except for the hand he waved out the window in acknowledgement. He didn’t come all the way down, though, turning the Blazer into the church’s driveway.

“So you know that guy?” Sam asked, the set of his shoulders relaxing by increments.

“I suppose you could say that. He came into town, oh, about four weeks ago. Asked if he could do any work for us and all he wanted in return was a roof over his head. We get people like that passing through every now and again. Folks who are down on their luck. It was actually quite lucky that he showed up.”

“How?” Dean asked, immediately distrustful of anything resembling ‘luck.’ He had told Sam once before that he didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, and luck qualified as one of those. 

“With the economy still in the sewer, and Sunday attendance as bad as it is, tithings are way down. I had to stop our landscaping service back in May, and I haven’t been able to keep up the grounds by myself. He’s been a great help,” Pastor Reeves said, then grinned. “That’s just the way it goes, doesn’t it? You find yourself at the bottom of a hole, thinking you got nothing left, and then the Lord provides.”

“That’s been my experience,” Dean replied, a little too earnestly, since it earned him a sharp knuckle to the side from Sam. He grunted, rubbing sourly at the bruised spot while Sam spoke.

“You said he came four weeks ago. Have you noticed anything strange about him?”

“No, can’t say I have,” Reeves answered. “He’s quiet, maybe, but always polite. Always does what’s asked of him. I don’t have any complaints against him. And he eats every bite of food my wife brings him for supper.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Not a whole lot. I try not to ask too many questions. If people want to tell me, they’ll tell me.”

 Recovered now, Dean lifted his chin. “Where’s he staying now?”

“At the church. There’s a couple of back rooms we don’t use for much, and I have a few spare cots from the shut-ins we used to do.”

Dean had to hold himself back from shouting. Up until this moment, he had thought Pastor Reeves was an intelligent man. But housing a complete stranger—a drifter, no less—just as the town is getting terrorized by ghostly apparitions and at the church, which seemed to be ground zero for the whole mess? Only to say he had no complaints against the guy and that there was nothing weird about him?

Dean had his own opinions on God, but dear God save him from some of the idiots that were out in the world.

“Sam, go with Pastor Reeves to the trail,” Dean said, once he could speak without cursing the other man out. “I’ll go talk to this Michael guy and see if he’s seen anything strange.”

Sam looked equally angry, but he went with Reeves anyway to walk up the road. Dean took a deep breath, feeling for the weight of his dagger on his hip before he started back towards the church. He hadn’t brought a gun; most of his smaller firearms were useless against spirits, though he would have felt better having one against a human.

Then again, a sharp iron blade would work just as well between the ribs of a human as it would a black dog.

Dean stuffed his hands into his pockets, adopting the appearance of nonchalance as he strolled into the parking lot. He thought for a moment to stop at the Impala and maybe grab a more powerful weapon, but he decided against it. He was just scouting. Just testing the waters. 

The drifter, Michael, had driven the car around the back of the church, and Dean followed the tire tracks in the grass around the fenced yard. He slowed his step, catching sight of the man who, fortunately, hadn’t noticed him yet. 

Michael had backed up to the rear fence line, and he was pulling bags of cheap mulch out of the bed to stack them up on ground, working the part of gardener just as Reeves had said. Michael had his back to Dean, but Dean could see that, even if this guy was behind the appearance of a black dog, he was disarmed for the moment. He certainly had the clothes of a drifter: simple jeans and a worn-out blue t-shirt, darkened in large splotches with sweat. His sneakers might have been white at one point, but they were coated in dirt and wearing through at the seams.

Dean let himself relax a little bit more. Already he had run through a dozen possible scenarios, and he was pretty sure he could take this guy in a fight if needed. Dean stopped a few feet away, and waited until Michael paused in his work to wipe the sweat from the back of his neck, where the skin had gone faintly pink from sunburn.

“Hey man,” Dean greeted. “Warm day out?”

Michael startled in surprise but then turned, and Dean had to blink. The guy had a drifter’s wardrobe, yes, but certainly not the face of one. Though flushed from the heat, there was no disguising the features of someone who probably belonged in _Gone with the Wind_ , or could be old money out of Charleston. The guy was young, too, maybe early thirties, with a head full of curly hair that was so perfectly blond that it either came from a bottle or was a genetic draw that women from the golden age of Hollywood might have killed for.

Michael looked back at him with eyes—blue, but not a clear blue like the sky. They were much darker, like the ocean during a hurricane. There was only a second’s pause, though, before Michael’s lips lifted into a smile. “Well, you know what they say about the South in summer,” he said, his voice as thickly infused with a Georgia accent as Pastor Reeves, though it wasn’t nearly as deep. “Like Hell only hotter. But I guess you’d know that better than anyone.”

Dean jumped backwards, panic flaring up his spine like the current from a live wire and _damnit_ he should have gotten something out of the Impala how could he be _so fucking_ _stupid_.

_He knows. He knows you went to Hell. He’s gotta be a demon. A demon wearing an angel’s name and you’re an idiot you walked right up to him—_

“Why do you say that?” Dean demanded, though the muscles in his jaw and locked so tight he could barely get the words out. He started to reach for the knife on his belt. It wouldn’t stop a demon, but if there was going to be a fight—

“Your jacket,” Michael answered as he gestured at Dean clothes, seemingly oblivious to the first motions Dean was taking in order to try and kill him. “You gotta be roasting in that thing. Unless someone forgot to tell you that it’s August out.”

Dean gaped, mouth open like a landed fish and his heart still pounding against the inside of his chest as he struggled to make sense of the sudden de-escalation. His fingers flexed, grasping at empty air where, in less than a second, there would have been the hilt of a dagger.

“What?” he asked, stupidly.

Michael just leaned against the side of the truck, pulling a rag from his front pocket to wipe the dirt from his hands and forehead. “I’m guessing you’re here about the dog. 

Dean took another step back, quick as a shying horse, wrong-footed for the second time in as many minutes. Not a demon, but someone who _knows_. 

_Sam was right. It’s a black dog._

“You..you’ve seen it?”

“No. But I’ve heard it,” Michael answered. “So have a lot of other people around here. The pastor said he was going to get someone to help. We sure could use it.”

“Well, if you, um,” Dean started, trying to recover his sense of balance in this bizarre conversation. “If you could tell me everything..”

“What I can,” Michael said, staring at Dean with those strange, stormy eyes. Something prickled at the back of Dean’s neck, like an insect was crawling up it, but when he reached back, it was only his own sweat, dripping along the ridges of his spine. Michael opened his mouth to speak, as if he really wanted to say something, but then closed it the next moment. “I’m sorry,” he said after another lengthy pause. “I really am no good at introducing myself.”

Michael reached out, offering his hand for a shake, which Dean reluctantly came forward to take. But no sooner did their fingers clasp together than Michael tightened his grip, strong as a vice, and pulled him in close. Within inches of each other, actually, and Dean could smell the grass stains on the other guy’s skin. But that didn’t matter, because the touch of Michael’s palm burned with the same energy that Castiel’s hands did whenever he came too close to the surface of Jimmy’s body, and the light out of Michael’s eyes switched from reflected sunlight to shimmering angelic power.

Adrenaline coursed through Dean’s body within a split second, spurred on by a combination of anger and pure, unadulterated terror. He was ridiculously outclassed, and Sam was still far away. There was no way he could fight. He felt as frozen as deer in headlights, or as a rabbit hypnotized by a cobra. He was completely paralyzed, even as the tiny part of his brain, left over from when humans were still hunted by ancient predators in the night, screamed at him to run. _Run._

_God. Damnit._

_God damnit, Dean, and they even_ told you _his name was Michael._

But Michael didn’t vaporize him on contact, or even start in on a new monologue about vessel-ship and the Fate of the World. No. He only let the white light fade from his irises and leaned in to whisper urgently in Dean’s ear.

“I’m glad you came, Dean. These people are in grave danger.”


End file.
